Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange
*oil on panel
*64.5 x 53.8 cm
*inscribed c.l.: ‘Prince Maurice Aetatis 15. A1629 Prince Maurice’ et ‘Fridericus Henricus Aetatis. 15 A. 1629.
Frederick Henry of the Palatinate was born on 1 January 1614. His birth was celebrated by cannon fire in Heidelberg and bonfires in Scotland. Elizabeth of Bohemia was James VI/I’s daughter and at that time, soon after the death of her brother Prince Henry, the succession did not look as secure as it once had. Elizabeth’s surviving brother, Charles, was a sickly child and it was not certain that he would live to adulthood. The birth of Frederick ensured that there would be a male heir to the Scottish and English thrones. King James was so pleased that he granted his daughter 12,000 crowns per year.
In 1618, when his father became King of Bohemia, Frederick Henry accompanied his parents to Prague for their coronation and in 1620 went on a royal progress through Bohemia and part of the Palatinate. Within two years, the Holy Roman Emperor made war on the Bohemians who had chosen to elect a Protestant king rather than a Catholic overlord. Frederick was sent with his uncle, Louis, and bags containing his mother’s jewels to safety in Holland. It was May 1621 before the prince was reunited with his parents who were now exiles without a kingdom.
As the number of the prince’s siblings increased, a royal nursery was set up at Leiden, known as the Prince’s court. Frederick’s education continued at Leiden University while his parents suggested possible matches for him that would see the Palatinate returned if not to their hands, at least to the Prince Palatinate.
The prince had finished his education when the West India Company, of which Elizabeth was a shareholder, captured a Spanish treasure fleet. The teenager expressed a desire to see it. He and his father, who was not campaigning against the Holy Roman Empire at that time, travelled to Amsterdam. They approached the port as darkness fell. It was cold and foggy. While crossing the Haalemmermeer there was an accident. The Elector was rescued but his son was not. Despite Frederick’s attempts to locate his heir, the body, which had become tangled in rigging, was not found until the next day.
Frederick Henry was privately buried at the Kloosterkerk in The Hague.
De Caus was a French Huguenot who was an engineer and a garden designer. He arrived in England in about 1610 where he soon found himself in the employ of Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry. The former asked him to build aviaries for her birds as well as assorted fountains and grottos. He worked on the design for Somerset House’s garden and also for Hatfield House where Lord Cecil wanted a new fountain. His work at Richmond Palace was for Prince Henry – who also wanted to improve water supplies. His most famous employer was Elizabeth’s husband Frederick, Elector Palatinate who commissioned him to create gardens at Heidelberg.
De Caus’s inspirations came from his travels to Italy during the 1590s. IN 1601 he worked for the governor of the Spanish Netherlands and in 1605 he was described as a ‘fountain engineer’. He travelled widely -even so far as Persia.
As well as gardening it is thought that he was responsible for tutoring Prince Henry in mathematics and drawing. Nadine Akkerman also states that he taught Elizabeth art and music … the year after he had designed Anna’s French garden in Greenwich”. La Perspective avec la raison des ombres et Miroirs, published in 1612, was dedicated to the Prince who died at the end of the year. Elizabeth would continue to employ de Caus until 1619 not only as a designer of gardens but also a designer of masques.
He had returned to France by 1624 where he wrote a book abut sun dials.
Luke Morgan, Nature as Model: Salomon de Caus and Early Seventeenth Century Landscape design.
Robert Peake the elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I’m very much enjoying my current research into the life of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia as a child. A particular delight has been the work of Robert Peake the Elder who died in 1619 and who was commissioned to paint several portraits of Elizabeth as well as her brothers, Henry Frederick and Charles .
Peake was an apprentice of the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard. He became a freeman of the Company of Goldsmiths in 1576. By the 1590s he was a fashionable portrait painter at the court of Elizabeth I.
In 1607 he was appointed sergeant-painter to King James I having already been appointed, in 1604, as picture maker to Prince Henry. It was his task to paint the portraits that were sent as gifts to foreign kings and princes. And when not required to do that he was responsible for making sure that the royal collection was up to scratch and if the queen wanted some scenery for a masque that was his job as well.
After Henry’s death in 1612, Peake moved to the household of Henry and Elizabeth’s younger brother, Charles. He died in 1619, the same year as Anne of Denmark. His death and the death of Nicholas Hilliard (1619) saw a change in the way portraits were painted. The style would become increasingly baroque rather than full of the detail viewers often associate with the works of Holbein, Hilliard and Peake – but they also became more fluid. The pictures of Princess Elizabeth, lovely as they may be, as quite stiff in comparison to the work of later artists.
Auerbach, Erna. Tudor artists; a study of painters in the royal service and of portraiture on illuminated documents from the accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I. (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1954)
Eleanor Hay – Lady Eleanor Livingston, Countess of Linlithgow
Well it’s a bit different but it’s almost inevitable that the raising of sixteenth and seventeenth century children should bring me to this point. Fletcher records that there are 22 printed guides for parents, often drawing on the Bible, advocating physical punishment. One went so far as to say that it purged corruption from the child – always good to find a Puritan viewpoint (forget Romantic images of children trailing clouds of glory), the Stuart period was definitely more into the sinfulness of infants. And let’s be clear this was applied to girls as well as boys.
Not that beating was the first recourse of a Protestant household. It was essential to bring a child up in fear and obedience. This meant that manners were an essential part of childhood education, as they had always been. Silence could be added to the list – seen and not heard was an essential during church services. Mothers and nurses were expected to teach young children their prayers, to read their Bible and the correct behaviour in a place of worship. In an age associated with cheap print, catechisms of questions and answers were readily available for the authoritative mother.
For Elizabeth Stuart born at the end of the sixteenth century and raised by her governess Lady Eleanor Livingston there was the additional problem of Eleanor’s faith. She was known to be a Catholic. The Presbyterian Church were alarmed by the way she raised her own five children, accusing her of keeping them from attending services at one point. The thought that a royal princess might be indoctrinated with Catholic beliefs was a source of friction between king and Church.
Even worse, Elizabeth, a girl, was expected to learn obedience and Eleanor Livingston was not obedient. Her husband, Andrew Livingston, 7th Lord Livingston was Protestant so it seemed to the Scottish Church that his wife ought to accept his faith. They even arranged for a chaplain from Stirling to teach her. She ended up being accused of obduracy. Eleanor was not a good role model for obedience, especially as she challenged male superiority of thought and mind in her continued refusal to accept Presbyterianism. Whatever else she might have been Princess Elizabeth’s governess was neither weak nor passive.
And for whatever reason, James VI concluded that the Livingstons were the best people to raise his daughters. The nursery at Linlithgow was closer to Dunfermline than Stirling, so although it was difficult for Queen Anne to visit her son it was much easier for her to visit Elizabeth, and a short lived sister Margaret. Anne was also firm friends with Eleanor and while James would not permit his wife to oversee the royal nursery he did care for her at the start of their marriage. He might not have expected that in 1601 Anne would become Catholic, further complicating the business of raising the royal brood.
Interested in the Winter Queen? Block of seven Zoom classes about the life and times of Elizabeth Stuart beginning 20 January 2025.
And a very happy new year to History Jar readers – let’s hope I’m a bit more organised in 2025! I’m not sure what happened to 2024 or to December for that matter.
And with that in mind I’m having a sort out of my computer files so that I can be more organised. I’ve already come across a rather helpful document from Leeds Library and Information Service that I forgot I had. It outlines Yorkshire battles from Saxon times onwards and can be found here: https://secretlibraryleeds.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/yorkshire-battles-research-guide-viewing-version-new.pdf. I think I’ll probably do something similar for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire – not that it will contain so many significant battles but it will at least help me be a bit more organised as yet another writing deadlines approach.
And talking of which – I’m giving a talk on the border reivers via Zoom this Saturday for YAHS Medieval Section at 2pm. I usually focus on the Elizabethan period so there is a little tweaking of material going on presently and, of course, I am starting a series of History Jar zoom talks on Monday 20 January on the subject of the Winter Queen, Elizabeth Stuart the daughter of King James VI/I. A place can be book at the HistoryJar via PayPal.
The Winter Queen was a rather cruel jest against Elizabeth’s husband, Frederick V of the Palatinate who was offered the crown of Bohemia but only ruled from 1619 until 1620. The problem was that the people of that kingdom were largely Protestant but their rulers were Catholic. In 1618 they rebelled against Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and then asked Frederick if he fancied the job. The nobles had their fingers crossed that if Frederick took the crown he would have the backing of his father-in-law, James VI/I. They also thought that the Protestant Union, which had been founded by Frederick’s father, would support him. Unfortunately for the Bohemians and for Frederick neither the king nor the union was prepared to back the new king. A year and four days after he was crowned Frederick lost the Battle of the White Mountain (which sounds as though it should be something in Lord of the Rings).
Elizabeth and her family was forced to flee into exile in The Hague while her husband became enmeshed in the Thirty Years War which had been heralded by his assumption of the Bohemian Crown. A kinder nickname for Elizabeth was the Queen of Hearts – mainly because everyone liked her.
It doesn’t normally snow in the Peak District in November these days – February yes but the last couple of days have been really cold and very festive looking, if you’re tucked safely up indoors. It got me thinking about whether I could find more information about snow in the past. I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the concept of the Little Ice Age. I tend to talk about it in the context of the Tudors and Stuarts. Frost fairs were held on the Thames when it froze. In 1683 the winter took a definite turn for the worse. The Great Frost of that winter saw the Thames frozen a foot deep! The River Aire in Leeds froze solid as well and Yorkshire held its own Frost Fair. The proceedings were described by Ralph Thoresby , a non-conformist, whose father served Sir Thomas Fairfax during the English Civil War.
I wouldn’t go so far as to describe the Eighteenth Century as warm either. The tradition of frost fairs continued. As the French Revolution took a grip, the cold continued to ensure the tradition of Frost Fairs in London. And let’s not forget the fog. It was actually sometime in the 1800s when the Little Ice Age ended although the snow continued to fall. Various reasons have been given for the plunging temperatures including volcanic activity and heat in the oceans changing because of the circulation of currents.
1946 was the worst winter since 1814. In isolated villages in the Peak District people burned their furniture to stay warm and shared food. Unfortunately in Nottingham, the winter’s snowfall was followed by a thaw in 1947 which caused the River Trent to go wandering. As a result a new series of flood defences were built.
Then the next winter to find itself in the history books was 1963 which earned itself the name ‘The Big Freeze’. There were snowdrifts 8ft deep in Kent.
As I recall, the 1970s were relatively snow free in comparison to the earlier winters of the twentieth century but the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s saw some heavy snow falls. I remember walking to school because the bus couldn’t get through. However from the 1980s onwards there has been little snowfall in comparison to past winters. 2018 saw the Beast from the East which drew cold air from Russia and Scandinavia across Britain.
Now as it happens I want to find out about the weather in November/December 1921 – which was apparently the driest year on record thanks to a prolonged drought. I’m starting to dabble in novel writing again…who knows, perhaps this time it’ll get further than a box under the spare bed!
The Met Office archive reports are all available online – see the link below. So if you have a particular year you’d like to find out more about, all the information is available. Incidentally although our winters are now demonstrably warmer, it is possible that with the accompanying increased rainfall we may also once again experience more snow.
I’m researching the Little History of Nottinghamshire among other things at the moment and am having a dabble into the 17th century.
Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham Castle on 22 August 1641. It marked a call to arms and the start of the English Civil War. A little under four years later, the king surrendered to the Scottish Parliamentarian army at the Saracen’s Head at Southwell near Newark. He was moved from there to Kelham and ordered to write a letter requiring the surrender of Newark to Parliament.
Newark experienced three sieges through the course of the civil war. The town even produced its own siege money during the last siege which occurred in 1645-46 because cash was in such short supply. Inevitably after three sieges the town wasn’t in good shape and the population became ill with plague to add to the general misery. Inevitably after the surrender the church St Mary Magdalene, whose spire is said to have been damaged by a canon ball during the second siege of 1644, was badly damaged by victorious Parliamentarian soldiers.
The castles at Newark and Nottingham were both razed in the aftermath of the war. Meanwhile int he countryside a series of manor houses suffered the consequences of civil conflict. At Shelford the church tower was used by sharp shooters while the Manor House, which belonged to the Earl of Chesterfield, was provided with trenches and earthworks for the defence of almost 200 royalists. The earl’s son, Philip, was so badly wounded in the final battle that ended the siege that he died the following day and that seem evening Shelford Manor was destroyed in a fire. It was rebuilt after the Restoration.
Wiverton Hall, belonging to the Chaworth family, was a Tudor Manor House complete with a moat. Following the events of Shelford, its governor, Sir Robert Therrill, came to terms with the Parliamentarians and made the hall indefensible. Only the medieval gatehouse escaped demolition. Wollaton Hall near Nottingham had been damaged by a fire in 1642 and the Willoughby family lived at their home in Warwickshire so although the estate supported the garrisons a Wiverton and Shelford it did not suffer the consequences of being garrisoned.
Near Worksop, Wlebeck Abbey was the residence of the Earl of Newcastle. he would be rewarded with a dukedom upon the Restoration but his home became a garrison under the command of his eldest daughter Lady Jane Cavendish during the civil war. Some of the earl’s valuables were buried for safekeeping – in the time honoured manner – while both royalists and parliamentarians helped themselves to anything else. The duke and his second wife, Margaret Lucas, spent many years after the Restoration restoring the property and its estates.
While the Duke of Newcastle was the most prominent of Nottinghamshire’s royalists, the Byron family of Newstead Abbey also played a significant part. There were seven brothers who all joined the Royalist army and all of them are thought to have fought at Edgehill. Thomas Byron killed by one of his own men at Oxford in a dispute over pay. His brother John was at the battles of Newbury, Nantwich and Marston Moor where he commanded the right flank of the Royalist line. He would eventually die in exile in 1652. Robert Byran became the military governor of Liverpool but was forced to surrender when his Irish troops mutinied. He spent some time in custody, fought at Naseby and was rearrested as a royalist spy. After the war he returned to Ireland with a commission. William was knighted by the king on the very day that he surrendered to the Scots at Southwell. He was with his brother John Byron at the Siege of Carnarvon and afterwards he went into exile where he continued to work for the royalist cause.
Gilbert was the youngest of the brothers and he is known to have fought in the Bishops’ War in 1639 when he was part of the King’s Lifeguard. In 1640 he was in Europe fighting on behalf of the king’s sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia but by January 1642 he was back in England and was one of the men who went with Charles I to arrest five members of Parliament. He may have been at Marston Moor before going to Wales with his brother. Eventually he made his way to Pontefract but was captured when he sallied out of the castle in search of provisions with a band of men. Like other royalists he was required to pay a fine but his health appears to have been poor, perhaps because of wounds – I’m not sure- and he died in 1656 leaving a wife and two daughters.
During the second, short lived, civil war which broke out early in 1648 Nottinghamshire saw a small but important battle near Willoughby-on-the-Wolds. At the end of the encounter 100 or so royalists were dead including Michael Stanhope, the brother of Philip Stanhope. There is a brass commemorating him in Willoughby Church.
Interestingly one of the most interesting accounts of Nottinghamshire’s civil war comes from Lucy Hutchinson, the wife of Colonel John Hutchinson who held Nottingham for Parliament and was a regicide, having signed Charles I’s death warrant. Lucy, who was devoted to her husband and wrote his biography and while it’s not as famous as Margaret Cavendish’s biography about her husband it provides an insight into the war in and around Nottingham.
Click on the image to open the link to Amazon (Amazon Associate) – For kindle owners the biography is currently (at time of writing) 49p but rathe more expensive if you prefer a hard copy.
There were three civil wars fought between 1642 and 1651 across Britain’s three kingdoms. Charles, married to Henrietta Maria, was increasingly distrusted because of his use of royal power, his economic policies and disagreement about religion.
There were many types of Christianity in Charles I’s realm from High Church groups such as the Arminians, favoured by Archbishop Laud, who supported vestments and altar railings and whose Book of Common Prayer laid out the form services should take. The archbishop believed in the ‘beauty of holiness’ and wanted lots of decoration. Many people saw Laud’s vision of the Church of England as almost Catholic in the form it took and it didn’t help that there were so many prominent Catholics at court including Henrietta Maria, Charles’ queen upon whom he relied for advice after the demise of his favourites.
For many people in England religion was related not only to faith but to national identity. It wasn’t that long since the Spanish Armada of 1588 or the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 – ‘Popish plots’ was examples of treachery.
In 1637 Puritan pamphleteers had their ears cropped and were branded for criticising Laud – which made him look rather cruel.
In 1638 the Scots revolted when Charles attempted to impose the Book of Common Prayer upon them.
Charles was forced to recall Parliament to raise funds to fight the Scots – parliament was sympathetic to the Puritans. The so called long parliaments lasted from 1640 to 1653. Recalled, and knowing that the king needed cash Parliament issued the Grand Remonstrance against the king in November 1641 and in June 1642 issued the Nineteen Propositions which was a bid to gain more power for themselves. By then the relationship between the monarch and his parliament was at breakdown. At the end of August, Charles raised his standard at Nottingham Castle and the country was at war.
Click on the pictures to open the links for more information about the books below. Diane Purkiss’s book provides an excellent account of the English civil war. I really enjoyed Michael Arnold’s Stryker series written against the backdrop of the turbulent 17th century.
Divine right is the belief in the God given right of a monarch to rule. The idea was established in the reign of James (1603-25) who believed that the king was subject to no other earthly authority and could only be judged by God. Any attempt to depose or even to restrict the powers of the king went against God’s will. In 1598 he had published a book called The True Law of Free Monarchies. He claimed that ‘Kings are justly called gods for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power on earth’. The Basilikon Doron written by the king as a set of instructions for his eldest son, Prince Henry, in 1599 identified his ideology more clearly.
The book is divided into three parts:
I) how to be a Christian king
2) practical aspects of kingship
3) the king’s behaviour in everyday life.
James’ belief in the divine right of kings had a negative impact on his relationship with the English Parliament. During the reign of his successor, Charles who inherited the throne following the deaths of his elder brother in 1612 and James in 1625 also believed in the divine right of kings. Charles I also believed that because he was God’s representative only he had the right to make laws and that to oppose him was a sin. He believed that he was above the law and had to govern according to his conscience.
By the time James died in 1625 Parliament was suspicious of the Stuart kings, by 1628 the tension turned to Parliamentary demands known as the Petition of Right. Charles lacked both experience and confidence and relied upon the advice of his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham advocated a raid on Cadiz which was a disaster. Parliament demanded that she should be impeached – so Charles dissolved parliament before it granted him any funds. Buckingham arranged for the king to marry a French Catholic bride (Henrietta Maria) and then went to war with the French in 1627 in support of the Huguenots of La Rochelle – the whole thing was a disaster because of poor planning. By 1628 Charles was at war, without any money and was trying to extract forced loans. He had no choice but to call Parliament.
Sir Edward Coke, a lawyer, put together the Petition of Right which stated, there would be no more forced loans; no imprisonment without trial – 5 knights had been sent to prison because they refused to pay Charles’ forced loan. In addition there would be no further use of free lodgings (billeting) for soldiers in civilian households and no use of martial law against civilians. At the same time, the House of Commons granted the king five subsidies but only if he agreed their terms. Coke and Parliament were defining the law by asserting rights that already existed. It should have been an opportunity for the king and parliament to learn to work together…
Click on the book to open the link in a new tab to find the book and read more about their contents. I love Leanda de Lisle’s writing. Last year she published a biography of Charle’s queen, Henrietta Maria
One of the things I really enjoyed about last year was finding out more about the flowers on the #unstitched coif and, in the process, learning a bit more about the woman who intended to sew it. I also enjoyed the topic I covered during lockdown on the history of plants – et voila – another new ‘spot’ for the blog – reading the past – I’m no good with the emoticons and emoji’s of modern technology. This is much more my thing.
The image of a carved passionflower, or passiflora, is taken from a Victorian headstone in a local churchyard and just happens to be the firth thing I found when I started scrolling through my photos.
Welcome to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It’s the age of exploration and some Jesuits are wandering around modern Paraguay and Peru. The conquistador, Pedro Cieza de Leon mentions the plant in writing for the first time in 1553 in the context of its fruit. The Christian symbolism associated with the five wounds of Christ that could be identified within the flower was described soon after: 10 petals for the number of disciples who were still loyal at the time of the crucifixion; filaments representing the crown of throne; five anthers for the wounds of Christ; the stamen looking a bit like the hammer that drove the nails; even the tendrils were described as being like the whips with which Christ was beaten. And bingo! A valuable teaching aid and a flowery justification for invading and Christianising the Americas. The plant was there, so obviously God wanted a bunch of conquistadors terrorising the locals in his or her name.
The story spread and in 1609, Giacomo Bosia, one of the knights of Malta, included the passionflower in a book about legends and miracles associated with the cross. Three years later passionflowers were being cultivated in Paris and England. It was originally called the Virginian Climber in Britain as no one wanted to mention the Catholic connection. However, after Charles I had his head removed in 1649, the late monarch was sometimes described by his supporters as ‘the passionflower’ because they believed he had been martyred. The Tradescants who were royal gardeners and plant collectors made it very popular -for a price- after the Restoration.
By the Victorian period it was a popular adornment for gravestones representing as it did Christ’s crucifixion, redemption and mankind’s salvation. The jesuit element of the equation and even Charles I had been discarded, or never even had the chance to get going. To be honest I don’t recall seeing it on Stuart or later embroideries, no point looking at the Elizabethans – and of course the expansion of trade changed English attitudes to embroidery and ornament as indeed did the Commonwealth. England had a rich embroidered tradition prior to the English Civil War. By 1661 the royalists who’d spent their exiles in the Low Countries and France thought that European art was much more sophisticated than anything home grown. And, by the eighteenth century beautiful fabrics were arriving from China and the Indias – no more sitting around embroidering your bed curtains and night hats!
I think I’ve seen a passionflower on an alta-frontal but that was Victorian as well. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a seventeenth century version in embroidered form. Stumpwork and crewel work were popular during that century. Please let me know if you spot any old needlework productions of the passionflower on your travels! A photograph (assuming its permitted would be even nicer).
Bleichmar, Daniela, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (Yale: Yale University Press, 2017) pp.82-89
